David Dayen writes a regular column for The American Prospect. In this post, he explains why Bannon was indicted. He and some of his friends created a website to “Build the Wall.” None of them had any engineering experience. They raised $25 million, and they paid personal expenses.
Dayen says this scam was part of a long history of grifting by con artists.
It was ironic that Bannon was taken into custody by agents from the USPS.
Dayen begins:
Author and historian Rick Perlstein (who’s doing a Prospect Zoom event with me about his new book Reaganland on Monday) wrote a famous story back in 2012 about “mail-order conservatism,” the tendency for the conservative movement to bilk their supporters through hysteria and lies and small-time grifting schemes. This tendency to rip off the rank and file dates back to the mail-order empire of Richard Viguerie. Con men were always critical to the conservative movement. Now, they comprise virtually the entire Republican Party.
Read the indictment of Steve Bannon and three associates, accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors to the “We Build the Wall” campaign, a preposterous effort on its face to crowdsource the private construction of the border wall with Mexico. We Build the Wall took in an astounding $25 million, only enough for one mile of the 576 Trump means to erect, but about $25 million more than should be handed over for a building project to people with no engineering or logistics background.
But Bannon and his pals were experts at thievery. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars from We Build the Wall for travel and hotels, while Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage nabbed $350,000 for “home renovations, payments on a boat (named “Warfighter”), a luxury SUV, a golf cart, jewelry, cosmetic surgery (!), personal tax payments, and credit card debt,” per the indictment. The money was routed through a third-party nonprofit and a shell company, using fake invoices and vendor receipts.
The We Build the Wall website, numerous donor solicitations, and written bylaws of the organization made repeated assurances that all the money would go to border wall construction. Hilariously, when they learned of the criminal investigation, they took the “no compensation” pledge off the website.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Kolfage is a Florida panhandle military retiree that was arrested yesterday. I hope he along with Bannon and any co-conspirators get an unbiased federal judge in charge of the case.
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Kolfage helped raise money for the Kavaugh family also. John Hawkins who set up the fundraising effort promised to give the money to the diocese of Washington D.C., after Kavanaugh declined to accept the money.
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I am struck by the similarity between the corruption associated with charter schools and the corruption in the scheme described here. Seems the Build the Wall bunch was small potatoes compared to the charter capers we see all the time.
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Some people know just how stupid Dotard is.
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Miles Taylor, the former DHS chief of staff:
“It’s easy to make light of this. You know, the internet’s flooded with memes of really funny instances of Donald Trump showing less than great mental acuity, but this was discussed often, this was discussed daily among the president’s senior advisers and the cabinet. People literally didn’t feel like he was up to the job. And I don’t blame someone who’s watching me right now from thinking, this guy’s selling out and he’s trying to cash in and so he’s going to trash the president. I am telling you with every fiber of my being that some of the president’s closest advisers did not think he had the mental acuity to do the actual job. We would go in there, again in meetings, the scariest ones being in the Situation Room, and those are usually ones where I can’t give you the details about what we were talking about, they’d be classified. But you would sit there trying to keep your jaw from hitting the floor because you’re trying to present the president sensitive threat intelligence and information that he needs to consider and he can’t keep his mind on it. He can’t focus and he fidgets and he gets confused. But this is the guy that we’re thinking, you know, needs to protect our country in an emergency, and he can barely focus on what’s in front of him, and rarely would read the piece of paper in front of him. I hardly ever saw Donald Trump read a document he was handed, but he did love pictures. He loved pictures, and there were many occasions where we had to go see the president and we figured out that the best way to convince him of something was to get a really good graphic of it. I can’t believe I’m saying that either, but this is the truth. This is what I witnessed, this is what many people witnessed, and I hope others will overcome that fear about what might happen in their personal lives if they speak out against the president. It’s the time to do it, it’s right, and it’s the only way we’re going to have a great American comeback is if we prevent a second Donald Trump term.”
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Didn’t the dupes who fell for this scam subscribe to the Trump claim (LIE) that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. Why any need for a “We Build the Wall” campaign? Red meat for the bigots, xenophobes and immigrant haters.
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I live New Mexico not far from that damn wall. The “We Build the Wall” did not make sense when it all started and makes less sense now. That wall probably fall down on its own as well as the rest of Trump’s steel curtain.
It is amazing how gullible the people were that donated to the “We Build the Wall” project. Totally amazing but again maybe not. Just think of all the BS that Trump puts out everyday and Trumpiters believe it like its gospel sent from heaven. These people drank Bannon and Kolfage’s “Koolaide” so now they can choke on it.
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I remember seeing children’s author and artist, Byrd Baylor, at a conference many years ago. She lives in Arizona by the border. She described keeping water and food in a shed on her property for those migrants passing through the desert. That was before the right wing made it ‘politically correct’ to hunt migrants down.
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People have been arrested for giving humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the border
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Other crooks have been involved in building sections of Donald Eek Thinly Skin Trump’s Great Wall of Racism and Lies.
Click the ProPublica link down below and read the story of how this section of wall was built through threats, and trolling from the builder with help in the form of pressure from Trump’s White House.
These crooks spent a few million to build a few miles of The Wall and used that to get $1.7 billion in federal contracts (with more help and pressure from Trump’s White House). I wonder how much of that money will end up not building any walls.
“He Built a Privately Funded Border Wall. It’s Already at Risk of Falling Down if Not Fixed.
“Trump supporters funded a private border wall on the banks of the Rio Grande, helping the builder secure $1.7 billion in federal contracts. Now the ‘Lamborghini’ of border walls is in danger of falling into the river if nothing is done, experts say.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/he-built-a-privately-funded-border-wall-its-already-at-risk-of-falling-down-if-not-fixed
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A wall is a terrible idea. The Rio Grande is very unpredictable in certain points along the Texas border. In fact, after a flood, the river actually changed some of its course near Nuevo Progreso, and some US land was annexed by Mexico. Erosion is an issue along the river banks. Also, walls interfere with the migration of wildlife.http://www.shop-progreso.com/miscellaneous/history2.html
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Reportedly, Betsy DeVos’ brother Erik Prince was on the board of the organization. No surprise there.
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Some have suggested the dismissal of Berman by Barr may have been to protect Bannon or to protect Trump from the Bannon scandal collateral damage.
I’m curious what Bannon did for the Chineses billionaire whose yacht he was on when he was arrested.
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For an in-depth micro-dissection of Steve Bannon, my wife’s Oscar winning cousin Errol Morris did a recent documentary on Bannon and his role in media and right wing culture. I highly recommend seeing it:
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That is a powerful ad for the film. I hope many see it.
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I thought it was a great film. Errol is not so personable, but he’s a great filmmaker.
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The film is incomplete if it fails to address Bannon’s “bastardized form of Christianity…a veneer of Christianity, intended to justify his political aims…his Academy for the Judeo-Christian West…”. Bannon’s right wing view is, “abortion, redefinition of marriage and growing reliance on the state of welfare are attacks on human dignity…(his view) militant secularists force divestment of Christianity.” Does the film build and evolve from the Lucifer analogy?
Is this director like the majority at this blog, silent about the death grip to install an authoritarian regime that comes from the religious?
America’s dominant religion has given power exclusively to one demographic. The silence about state Catholic
Conferences lobbying in capitols for school privatization is a particularly odd oversight at this blog.
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We Build the Scam
We Build the Scam
And public pays
We Build the sham
And take the rai$e!
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Bannon and his co-conspirators claimed that theirs was an entirely volunteer organization and that 100 percent of donations would go to the wall. Then they arranged elaborate means to siphon off big bucks for their personal use.
They conned the chumps for Trump. But then, the entire Trump presidency is a con. So, nothing new.
Bannon and company showed Trump supporters for what they are: dupes, gullible, easy marks, and so ignorant that they won’t understand the problem with what they did or so cultlike that they will invent an elaborate but ridiculous counter-narrative.
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Another con job from the masters of con and grift.
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Ever here of Morris Dees?
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Morris Dees’ legacy is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a shining example within the nation of people committed to the promise of an American democracy. Dees’ individual story doesn’t discount the legacy.
In this decade, Bannon and his benefactors, the Mercers, brought the ugliness of fascism to D.C. and to other European capitols.
False equivalency between the two men.
Btw- what’s the explanation for the alleged acid erosion in Bannon’s bathtub?
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These simmers, of course, will be pardoned by Thanksgiving.
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